Compensation Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, may recall that I strongly supported him on this amendment in Grand Committee, when I sought to echo his concern about the apparent abandonment of the principle that ignorance of the law is no defence. The Minister frankly told us that her own instinct had been to take out this clause, but that on legal advice she had been persuaded to leave it in. She said:"““I am happy to consider the wording. However, I have driven various people completely mad in trying to see whether we can improve it””.—[Official Report, 23/1/06; col. GC 328.]" So far, I do not think that anything has come forward that would improve it. The Minister will know that it is famously impossible to get two lawyers ever to agree about anything. However, I have had the benefit, as has the noble Lord, of seeing some examples from the Minister’s officials of outwardly similar provisions in existing legislation. I agree with the noble Lord that there are undoubtedly other statutes in which someone can be absolved of criminal liability if they really did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, that they were committing an offence. However, like the noble Lord, I think that there is a crucial distinction between the examples that I have been given and the current position in this legislation. In those examples, there is a defence of ““reasonable excuse””, if I can call it that, in situations where someone is caught out by the facts rather than by ignorance of the law’s application to them. I shall not go into the detail of those examples, but we are talking about situations where, for instance, a person was not served with a stop notice and then went on to contravene it. In all the examples we have seen, the opportunity for people to argue that they did not know that they were committing an offence is very much restricted to situations where they had done everything possible to get it right, but were undone by the facts of the case. I am afraid that this clause is not currently drafted that tightly, and I can see claims farmers coming to the view that ignorance of the legal provisions could provide a defence against prosecution. None of us wants that to happen. Let me be clear: I am sympathetic to the Minister’s concerns that an individual may make all the appropriate inquiries and then inadvertently commit an offence, having been misled by advice from the regulator. That is, however, a very specific situation, whereas this provision seems very broadly drawn. A reasonable defence could indeed be created, but only if the clause were suitably redrafted to create the specific defence, and only the specific defence, envisaged. In summary, if the wording could be amended to restrict the defence to those cases where someone had made inquiries of the regulator and could not reasonably have been expected to know that they were committing an offence, I believe I could find a way of supporting the Government’s position. If the Minister is wedded to the wording, however, I fully support the position taken by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart.